Tuesday, May 31, 2016

The Stanley Cup Finals kicked off last night, with the Penguins snatching game one on a late 3rd period goal in front of their home crowd. I'm not particularly rooting for either team, I'm just enjoying the games. On the one hand I think it would be cool to see Crosby win another Cup, on the other hand it would be kind of nice to see Joe Thornton and Patrick Marleau finally get there after all these years.

In any event, it seems like an appropriate time to post a quick blaster of 2014-15 Upper Deck hockey that's been sitting in my draft folder for a couple of months. I picked this up on Dave and Adam's Card World in the same order that provided my Donruss Soccer box.

I wasn't really planning on building this set or anything, but ended up with this blaster in my cart for three reasons. First, it's an Upper Deck flagship set that I had very few cards from, so I knew the majority of what I pulled would be new to my collection. Secondly, there are a really great crop of rookies in this set and I was hopeful that one of my two promised Young Guns would be a good one. Finally, it was cheap. As in $10.

I'm not going to bother showing you every card I pulled, especially since this set has been out a couple of years and you've probably seen all the images elsewhere already. I did select a few choice base cards that featured interesting photographs, and that were all new to my collection.

Love this close look at Pavel Datsyuk working his magic in the face-off circle. Kind of sad that we've likely seen him play in his final NHL game, but you can't blame the guy for wanting to return home for quality of life and time with family. I'm sure he'll be announcing his decision in the coming weeks, but it sounds all but certain that he'll forego the final year on his NHL contract and begin playing in the KHL.

How about a couple of celebration shots? Love the photograph on this Toews card, complete with ecstatic fans and some shameless advertising for NBCSN and Honda.

This one is not quite as exciting, but still a nice photograph and I like that you can see the puck rolling around in the net there.

I know goalie-cam shots are getting to be old hat at this point, but this one is pretty decent.

Here's my first Young Guns card of the box. Not one of the rookies I was hoping to pull to be honest, but those are the breaks. At least Namestnikov has become a reliable NHL regular, appearing in 80 games for Tampa Bay this past season. Bonus appearance by Steven Stamkos lurking in the background as well!

I pretty much have to like Brad Marchand as a Bruins fan, and he certainly had a great individual season even though it was a disappointing one for the team. With all of that being said though, he seems to have a personality that wouldn't really jive with mine, to say the least.

I thought this photograph of goaltender Jhonas Enroth was a little more interesting than yet another tightly-cropped on-ice shot at least.

Okay, that's enough of the base cards, let's check out the couple of inserts that I pulled. These Shining Stars cards just don't do it for me, this one's been dumped into my trade box.

Canvas cards on the other hand are some of my favorite inserts in any product, period. I ended up with two really nice ones out of this particular blaster, starting with the young and talented center Aleksander Barkov of the Panthers. Florida is chock full of top young talent, and I sort of adopted them as my team once the Bruins failed to make the playoffs this year.

The other Canvas card was even better than that, as it will fit beautifully into my "players with The Cup" collection. What a great moment captured on cardboard here as Anze Kopitar celebrates the Kings Stanley Cup Championship. That is the smile of an athlete that's on top of the world right there!

Alright, just one card left to show, and I definitely saved the best for last. My first Young Guns card was nothing special, but my second was one of the cards I had most hoped to pull...

After showing some promise in his 2014-15 rookie season with 37 points in 80 games, Evgeny Kuznetsov really made a name for himself in his sophomore season this past year. He reached the 20-goal plateau for the first time, and his 77 points were good enough to get him into the top 10 in scoring for the entire league! Kuznetsov was quiet to say the least in the Caps' playoff run, but he's certainly going to be making an impact for many years to come as he's still just 24 years old.

The cheapest copy of this card available on COMC at the moment is $34, not bad pulling one from a $10 discount blaster!

That's all I've got for today, I hope those of you that are hockey fans enjoy the remainder of the Stanley Cup Finals! I plan to be back with another trade post tomorrow...

Monday, May 30, 2016

Today I will finally get up to speed with thanking at least one of the many great folks I exchange cards with, my friend Jeff S. As I was scanning and cropping the last batch of cardboard Jeff sent just a few weeks ago, another package rolled in. I have no idea what I've done to be treated so well, but I certainly can't complain!

I got my first taste of a couple of 2016 releases courtesy of this package, the first being Gypsy Queen. I soured on this set over the years since its inaugural release, which I absolutely loved. I'm not sure how I feel about this one, but my first impression is that it's better than the last few years at least.

I'd at least like to complete a team set, and this pair is a good start.

These on the other hand, are just awesome. For a company lacking a license, I commend Panini for its Diamond Kings set this year. Not only will I be grabbing all the Red Sox, but I hope to pick up a few parallels as well, and possibly even some retired greats from other teams.

I mean check out this Dom DiMaggio. Logos be damned, that is a sweet card of a man who doesn't get enough hobby love.

There are ten Red Sox in the base set, and Jeff hooked me up with five of them.

New Xander Bogaerts! My Bogaerts collection has really been picking up steam, and Xander has been killing it this year at the plate. He's pacing the AL in hits, and has more hits than anyone in baseball since the start of 2015. I'm glad I was onto this guy early as a Red Sox fan, because I was able to build up a pretty decent collection before his prices got too high. I think I've shown around 50 of Xander's cards here over time, and I've got some really nice ones backlogged to feature here throughout the season.

There was some other nice cardboard in the package to accompany the 2016 stuff, as Jeff did some damage to my set building want list...

Flair baseball was right up there with Topps Finest back in the day in terms of "high end" sets that to an 11 or 12 year old seemed like cardboard gold. Each pack of the inaugural Flair baseball set came in its own little box, and they were expensive as hell by the standards of the day. Well, the Flair set has certainly cooled over time, and I've been working on building it since busting a cheap hobby box years ago. I've got the base set finished, just tracking down the rest of the Wave of the Future inserts and I'm one closer now.

I also received a trio of cards I needed towards my '82-83 O-Pee-Chee set.

This is my favorite of the three, check out the blood streaming down Crawford's neck! Also, those flying V sweaters were just atrocious. This one looks like it was made with a couple of rolls of colored duct tape.

All of those were great, and helped me get closer to some sets, but they kind of paled in comparison to the final two cards.

Two pretty much mint '59 Topps cards for my set! I'm putting this together in absolutely any condition (I have cards with paper loss on the back, cards missing corners, etc), but the two Jeff sent along are real beauties!

Even if I completed '59 Topps some day and went back to start upgrading, I wouldn't have to touch these. I don't recall the last time I was so pleased to get a pair of Yankees cards in the mail!

Since I'm aiming to get completely caught up with Jeff, I actually have a few more cards to show. These are the last remnants from my scans folder of a trade package that he sent me around a year ago! So yeah, I'm long overdue in getting to these...

A quartet of Nolan Ryan cards leads off the remainder of this stack.

I didn't realize it, but it looks like Ryan got a handful of cards in this Golden Greats insert set from 2012 Topps.

Sweet, this one had been on my Zistle want list. It's a pesky short print, happy to have this one in hand!

Alright, back to the Red Sox with a couple of prospects who haven't exactly made it yet...

One of a seemingly infinite number of '90s Garciaparra cards that I'm missing. 1998 Donruss definitely has a patriotic design to it.

Remember Will Middlebrooks?

This Pacific Private Stock mini of Nomar Garciaparra is pretty cool. Had no idea there were mini Pacific cards.

Here's an insert from one of the nicer sets of all-time, 1993 Upper Deck.

Yes, there are still 1992 Donruss cards that I'm actively looking for. Not many, but a few, and this was one of them.

Random Henry Owens USA Baseball insert from Bowman Chrome.

This Trot Nixon insert from 2002 Leaf is actually serial-numbered to /100. I seem to get a lot of nice Trot Nixon cards in trade, which doesn't bother me in the least!

My favorite two players on the current team in 2015 Allen & Ginter form...

Another Nomar from the '90s that I was inexplicably missing.

I'll close it out with an impressive trio of oddballs, cards I absolutely would have picked out and paid for myself eventually, had Jeff not sent them to me. First, a mint 1980 Kellogg's Jim Rice. Jim was an absolute beast at the turn of the decade, and like many collectors I think Kellogg's are some of the best oddball issues of all-time.

This one is even cooler, another HOFer in Fergie Jenkins from the 1977 set! Jenkins was the only Red Sox player on the checklist, so this would be a complete team set as well. Not bad, especially since I knocked out the '72 Kellogg's team set a few posts ago. I really need to get together a list of the rest of what I'm missing and try to finish off the Kellogg's run this year.

Last "card" for today. These Crane Potato Chip Discs are fantastic. Carlton Fisk here is my second one, both received from Jeff actually.

Jeff, your generosity continues to amaze me. I truly appreciate all the great cardboard, and I am definitely going to make an effort to get something out to you soon. My Red Sox collection got a really solid boost from these couple of packages for sure!

Sunday, May 29, 2016

What: 2011 Topps Chrome - #50 - Ichiro (Atomic Refractor, #'d /225)Where: COMCHow Much?: $1.88Why?: I feel a little guilty putting up another one card post, especially given how many trade packages I have waiting in the wings to be posted. Sometimes when you spend as much time staring at a computer screen as I do every week though, you just want to get away from it for a while. Especially on a beautiful, long weekend in the summer.

Until I'm back with something more substantial, enjoy this Ichiro Atomic Refractor. At less than $2 it was one of my better COMC steals of the past few months. This is just my fourth Atomic Refractor from this set, and my first that's not a Red Sox player. That leaves 216 others to track down if I'm ever feeling ambitious!